One fan's blog of the Philadelphia Phantoms' final season in The Spectrum, 2008-09.

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The final pro hockey game at the Spectrum has been played.

Friday, December 12, 2008

Phantoms at Springfield 12-12-08: Third Period

I'm surprised -- it took me all the way until the third period to be able to type, "Guenin blocked a shot". ;-) It took us a bit of time to finally get the puck out of our zone, though, because the Falcons came out of the tunnel with a purpose. They have every intention of trying to emulate the Flyers' accomplishment of overcoming a four-goal deficit in the final period of the game.

The Falcons' task has just gotten more difficult, however, as they have gone shorthanded for the fifth time in the game. We're spending time playing keep-away in our zone, but the Falcons are not set up to generate a shorthanded threat. However, we got very little done during that man advantage -- we took no shots on goal.

Oh, but Ross got a breakaway just after we went back to even strength. WHAT a freaking SAVE by Dubnyk! Darn darn darn, I thought for sure he was going to get a, um, headgear prank. ;) Not this time.

Once again, Springfield was about to go on a powerplay, as Guenin was slated to go to the sin bin for interference. He buried a player at the boards who didn't have the puck. I thought for a moment that we'd end up aat 4 on 4 again, as another Falcon went after Guenin for the hit, but when the dust cleared, only Guenin got the two-minute interference infraction. Springfield is on its third PP of the nght.

They're about to get a long two-man advantage, in fact, as we're about to send another player to cool his heels with Guenin. It's... Shall we say, a marginal call at best.

But the marginality of the call was enough to give Potulny a PP goal against his former teammates. DRAT. I was hoping that Munroe would exit the building with a shutout, but it's not meant to be. At least his fellow Alabama alumnus Ross still has an opportunity to for the headgear prank.

So it's 4-1 now, and Springfield is about to go back on the two-man advantage. The Falcons promptly called a timeout.

OK, so the good news is, we got Kane back so we were at 5 on 4. The bad news is, nearly immediately thereafter, the Falcons scored on a screened shot to make it 4-2. That wasn't how we'd have liked to return to even strength, but what's done is done.

Now we can't seem to get rid of the dratted Falcons -- they're really invigorated and we have about half the period left to go. So far, we've been outshot in this period 9-1. (Two separate two-man disadvantages will do that to a team)

Springfield's video crew has to get these darned ads off the arenavision once play starts. They keep missing the beginning of play, so that the announcer is describing the goings-on on the ice whie we are looking at lists of birthday names or waving Falcons logos.

Springfield is about to take a hooking penalty, so now it's time for the Phantoms to do some PP damage of our own. Let's go, guys. Giroux takes a shot, followed by a shorthanded breakout by the Falcons. They made things interesting in our end for a while, but we finally got the heck back down to Springfield's end. SCOOOORE -- Claude Giroux fires a cannon blast into the net to increase our lead to 5-2. We hae 6:40 left in the period. Whew. These past few minutes of the game have been blood-pressure-raising.

I think the Falcons have spent more time in front of Munroe in this period so far than they did in the first two periods combined. Fortunately, we're down to the final minute of the game, so we'll just have to play a sensible game for another sixty seconds of game time. If we avoid boneheaded mistakes or needless penalties, we should be in good shape.

Oh, darn AHL Live, they did it again! They cut the freaking transmission off while our annonuncer was right in the middle of giving some stats. :rant: :rant: :rant: Can't they at least wait until the broadcasters finish speaking and sign off before they end the darn cybercast?

Anyway, the Phantoms are tied at the moment in the standings with the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins. We are off until Sunday night, when said Pens visit the Spectrum. The Penguins played tonight, and will also play on Saturday night before coming to Philly for their third game in three days. I hope that we get a good rest and come out with a lot of energy on Sunday. We need to trounce our in-state rival.

Come on, guys -- we've just won four in a row. Take Sunday and bump that up to five. :) Go Phantoms!